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Big Data is Revolutionizing IT Recruiting

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2014-06-02 11:26

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By Upp Technology

Predict the unpredictable: how you can use big data to build a great workforce.

The world’s leading companies aren’t just using big data to improve the customer experience and to root out inefficiencies in their operating processes, they’re using big data to build a stronger foundation for their company. It all starts at building the right team. By applying big data analysis to their own internal hiring processes, companies are able to make fact-based decisions to consistently hire the best people for their IT organizations.

The amount of data available to enterprises is growing exponentially to the point of being seemingly infinite. The companies that best interpret that data to create actionable processes within their business will be the ones that own the future.

Using Big Data in Recruiting: Real-life Examples

Why are the top companies using big data in their hiring processes? It leads to astounding results.

Xerox uses big data in the hiring of its call center staff. By collecting data on their existing employees, they were able to apply it to future hires to cut their turnover rate in half. Previously, Xerox had relied on experience for their hires, but the data showed them that they need to place more emphasis on personality when hiring to find people who will stick around longer. Xerox is able to apply the label “creative” or “inquisitive” to potential employees based on the data it gathers. The “creatives” actually have a much greater chance of staying around long enough for training costs to be recouped, so they are more often hired.

Amazon does something very similar and collects as much data as it possibly can on its current employees. Analyzing how their skills, strengths, and experience relate to their longevity and success with the company helps Amazon not only perform more targeted recruiting for future job openings, but also allows the company to assign projects more effectively throughout the organization.

Why Recruiting Needs Big Data

Big data helps you establish trends and patterns, predict the seemingly unpredictable, and decrease your uncertainty. In recruiting, those factors most compellingly reveal themselves in these two ways:

Halting Employee Turnover
According to the Bureau of National Affairs, businesses in the United States lost around $11 billion dollars a year on account of employee turnover. The Bureau also reveals that recruiting costs are 1.5x higher than the average annual salary, so being able to effectively select and maintain your workforce is of the utmost importance to your company’s bottom line. Big data can help you identify the workers that are more likely to stick around longer.

Improving Employee Effectiveness
Big data will help you find the perfect fit for your open position, regardless of their past experience or if they’ve been overlooked by less savvy competitors. You can even use big data to increase the effectiveness of employees well after they’ve been hired by motivating and rewarding them to improve their performance metrics.

Recruiting has been a mostly subjective art form since its advent, with hiring decisions based on simply a resume and the vibe the recruiter gets from the interview process. Factors recruiters have relied on historically could be flawed based on the findings of new data. A potential employee may have only made it into a prestigious university because of family ties. GPA could be misleading as well, a student could end up with a perfect grade point average simply because they excel at following directions, but are unable to creative problem solve on their own in a work environment. Interviews can be equally misleading. Some people may just be bad at interviewing but still great long-term prospects. A candidate’s attractiveness or ability to relate to the recruiter over hobbies and interests can also cause this bias. It’s much harder for a computer to be biased, which opens the talent pool up to find more great people.

This means that recruiters need to be open to more objective and data-driven means to find great people. Targeting great talent is becoming more of a science than an art. Put very simply, having more relevant data built into your hiring process allows you to better qualify job candidates from the very start.

Think about the statistical revolution that has occurred within Major League Baseball over the past couple decades, made most famous by the book/movie Moneyball. Recruiting for an IT company isn’t altogether that much different. As a recruiter, your role is the same as that of a baseball scout: to find the right talent to build the best team possible. Unfortunately, you can’t figure out a database architect’s BABIP, xFIP, or VORP quite as easily as you can a baseball player’s, but there are still ways to glean pertinent information from the data that is available to you.

How to Get Started with a Big Data Consultant

Without a clear plan and goals for using data, your new strategies won’t even be able to get started. Our big data consultants will transform your data into a story. We shine a light on the things you are unable to see and clearly show why they will ultimately improve your hiring processes.

Data alone won’t solve every problem, but the incremental improvements it does bring about over time will push you way out in front of the competition. While they’re stuck in the stone age using untested theories and anecdotal evidence, your company is using proven methods based on undeniable data-driven trends to hiring the best and brightest. There is no better time than right now to begin implementing a big data strategy into your recruiting practices.